Meet the 2018 Exago Innovation Gurus

We are pleased (and proud) to announce the winners of the Exago Innovation Guru Awards 2018. Our Guru winners who truly stood out for their performances in the past year are:

The Exago Innovation Guru – Hunter: Pestana Hotel Group

The largest multinational hotel group of Portuguese origin is our Exago Innovation Guru – Hunter 2018. Through the new Envision@Pestana initiative, using Exago software, the Pestana Hotel Group has reaffirmed its investment in innovation, which has been at the heart of the group since its foundation, and is now mobilising efforts and minds to develop a true innovation culture.

This award recognises the Pestana Hotel Group’s creativity and commitment by launching a widespread, collaborative innovation initiative, hunting for ideas that can generate profitable actions and transform the hospitality business.

Involving hotels in the UK, Spain, Portugal, Germany and The Netherlands, Envision@Pestana is calling on the company’s employees to participate in leveraging its international expansion into different segments and geographies, and to do so on a daily basis.

To achieve this, the highly motivated in-house Innovation Team developed local ideation workshops at all the hotels involved, with cross-functional teams accounting for almost half of all the ideas generated. Targeted communication efforts and the appointment of Innovation Ambassadors to spread the word and recruit other participants also contributed to attract users across departments, capturing almost one idea per participant in this first round.

The Exago Innovation Farmer 2018: CTT

Since good ideas take time to grow – and this is an ongoing endeavor –, the Portuguese national postal service CTT has once again picked up the 2018 Exago Innovation Guru – Farmer Award, for the continuous focus of its Innovation Team to achieve innovation excellence.

A trusted brand with over 500 years of history, CTT introduced the Innovation Tank in 2018, a new idea selection process that is now to be adopted at the end of each challenge cycle to better serve and align ideas with programme purposes. The Innovation Tank has tackled the bottleneck at the last stage of the innovation funnel, allowing for an increase of 400% efficiency in the implementation phase.

With roadshows in different locations, exploratory innovation sessions, Innovation Days, a thorough use of all internal communication channels and on-site promotion to increase programme awareness, CTT continues to capitalise innovation management, with strong leadership support and clear innovation goals. The top participants are also awarded and recognised in public events. As a result, the innovators’ pool continued to grow throughout 2018, registering a 9% increase.

Congratulations to all our clients for having embraced the challenge of promoting innovation within their companies! The Exago team especially congratulates the Pestana Hotel Group and CTT teams for their brilliant work in 2018 and for the motivation shown in opening up new paths and bringing new ideas to their organisations.